The ‘real’ matric pass rate is 37.6%, says DA

The Democratic Alliance says while the Department of Basic Education celebrates this year’s 78.2% matric pass rate, Minister Angie Motshekga has again failed dismally to address the large number of learners who don’t write matric in the first place.

DA Shadow Minister of Basic Education Nomsa Marchesi says nearly half the learners who enrolled in Grade 1 in 2007, didn’t write the full-time matric exams in 2018 as they were expected to.

She says unfortunately, we must also confront a shocking truth: the real matric pass rate is 37.6% if you include the number of 2016 Grade 10s who actually passed matric in 2018.

“These Grade 10s should be celebrating with other matriculants, but more than half didn’t write matric in the expected timeframe. This means only 37.6% of these Grade 10s passed matric. The others have either become stuck in a struggling education system repeating grades, or worse, dropped out of the system completely”.

Marchesi has further criticised the new Multiple Exam Opportunity system that saw Limpopo, Mpumalanga Eastern Cape and Northern Cape having over 15% of their candidates writing only some of their exams in November 2018, with the rest set to be written in May/June 2019.

The DA says it is concerned that these candidates will not go on to actually complete their remaining exams.